Such heavy air focus

[Chris]

Yeah, you can win the OG by doing a single UFO mission if you're able to get lucky on the monthly funding rolls so your game lasts long enough for you to find a landed battleship. That gives you the research you need for Cydonia, and presumably also the psionic research that makes the game incredibly easy.

In Xenonauts I reckon you need to do at least half a dozen missions to win the game. You're still better off doing every combat mission that becomes available, but you just don't have to do it. The airstrike option legitimises the player saying "Meh...I don't want to do another Light Scout mission, I've already done four of them today", even if the rewards are not as great as doing the full mission.

The auto-resolve still needs some more work to balance properly, but the idea is that it'll be as effective as an average player is at air combat so you can skip the air combat if you want. The balance will probably improve dramatically over the next month or two simply because I'm playing and balancing the game a lot more lately and I can't be bothered with the air combat any more (whereas Aaron plays all his manually).

[Solver]

The potential problem with air autoresolve is tedium if I am in some situations better than the autoresolve. Say, I can shoot down a Corvette with 2-Fighter escort if I have 3 Condors, autoresolve can't. Then I would do those manually. Though autoresolve is still great to have, I use it for fights like 2 Condors vs. Light Scout or others where I know I win 100% of the time anyway.

I also see great potential for community map packs here. Much of the reason why I sometimes feel "I don't want another light scout mission" is because of the map variety. The maps have improved a lot since v18, but I still recognize them just by what's around my dropship much of the time.

[Solver]

The potential problem with air autoresolve is tedium if I am in some situations better than the autoresolve. Say, I can shoot down a Corvette with 2-Fighter escort if I have 3 Condors, autoresolve can't. Then I would do those manually. Though autoresolve is still great to have, I use it for fights like 2 Condors vs. Light Scout or others where I know I win 100% of the time anyway.

I also see great potential for community map packs here. Much of the reason why I sometimes feel "I don't want another light scout mission" is because of the map variety. The maps have improved a lot since v18, but I still recognize them just by what's around my dropship much of the time.

[kraex]

Classic example happened to me today in early game (think it was November of the first year). I had a wave of 4 UFOs show up (normal difficulty) at my secondary base. One scout, One light scout, one was a corvette, one was a corvette with a 2 fighter escort. I have what should be considered a well-stocked airforce at this base, with 2 condors and 2 foxtrots. I think one ship was damaged. I send out the first foxtrot, who shoots both avalanche at the unescorted corvette. That does 49% damage to it, so I have to disengage and run. I send my second foxtrot who also does 49% and runs. So I have to send a third ship. This is just for the unescorted medium.

I send a condor after the "scout", but I can't kill it. I do 85% to it or so, and have to run. I take some damage. Since the medium was far away, both my foxtrots have to refuel. They do this in the wrong order, as someone has pointed out, so they refuel before re-arming. Despite the fact that the unescorted corvette flies almost on top of my base, my foxtrots have no ammo. Eventually I manage to down the "scout" with the 2 condors, I do get another foxtrot up to finish off the 98% damaged corvette. The light scout and the escorted corvette get away.

I played the fights well, I didn't take much damage, and I have plenty of aircraft. But 4 UFOs (6 if you count the escorts) showing up at one base that early in the game, there's not really any way for me to down them all. Maybe that's the point, but as a perfectionist, I don't really enjoy it. I haven't had the opportunity to research better aircraft weapons yet (because they're not unlocked). I don't want to have to focus on air this much at all, and even though I'm trying to play the game the way I think you want it played, on a relatively easy difficulty, I'm completely overwhelmed at the third month.

The pacing is all wrong. Maybe it becomes irrelevant once you have uber weapons, I have no idea. But the first time in a game I see a medium, and I get two, one with fighter escort, and it's going to take 3 ships minimum to bring it down due to nerfs to foxtrots and avalanche. And meanwhile I still have 5 more UFOs that I'm not dealing with yet. That's what I don't like about air play so far.

[StellarRat]

@Kraex - You really need to have Alenium explosives researched before the aliens start throwing corvettes at you. That's most of your problem in the situation you're describing. With Alenium warhead missiles two Condors can shoot down scouts without getting hurt and two Foxtrots can down an unescorted corvette safely.

The best you can do right now is to send 2 Condors and 1 Foxtrot to the corvettes with escort fighters, use the Condors to shoot down the fighters and do a little damage to the corvette with the Foxtrot then send a second strike of 2 Foxtrots and a Condor to finish it off.

Don't forget you generally have 2 -3 chances to intercept each alien ship, so you can do multiple attacks on each one. Their damage does not go away over time.

Edited December 20, 2013 by StellarRat

[kraex]

@Kraex - You really need to have Alenium explosives researched before the aliens start throwing corvettes at you. That's most of your problem in the situation you're describing

You may have missed the part about "I didn't research them because they haven't been unlocked". I'm not sure which component unlocks alenium explosives research, but I have done ALL research available to me and done every ground mission, and I don't have those research options available. It's only November of 1979, there have been maybe 3 waves of UFOs. It's not possible for me to have researched the explosives you say I need because I haven't found the unlock item yet.

[StellarRat]

That's unfortunate. You'll have to handle them with multiple attacks then. I think Alenium explosives come after "Alenium" and are unlocked from stuff you recover from a scout...can't remember. Maybe someone else can comment.

Edited December 20, 2013 by StellarRat

[kraex]

The best you can do right now is to send 2 Condors and 1 Foxtrot to the corvettes with escort fighters, use the Condors to shoot down the fighters and do a little damage to the corvette with the Foxtrot then send a second strike of 2 Foxtrots and a Condor to finish it off.

So you're saying that I need 5 interceptors to deal with 1 UFO squadron, without mentioning the other 3 squadrons. I think you've illustrated my point of this thread beautifully.

To deal with this particular wave effectively, which I remind you is at my second base, so I've had less time to prepare it, I would need at least 5 interceptors, of the right configuration. (2 Condors, 3 Foxtrots) And then I still might be losing points because after I spend the effort of 5 interceptors to defeat one squadron, I still need to spend 3 interceptor rounds to deal with the other corvette, at least 2 condors for the "scout", and a single condor should be able to defeat the "light scout". Also, since I had to send in my initial 2 condors to fight the fighters + corvette, if either of them have taken damage, chances are they may not be ready in time to re-engage as you describe.

Add to this that re-arming takes place after re-fueling, and if any of the UFOs run away from you, they take several hours to refuel before there's any point re-launching them, even if the aliens fly to your base after your initial skirmish.

To deal with this wave effectively, on NORMAL difficulty, in only the third month of play, I would need at LEAST 5 interceptors, and probably more like 8. It's a bit ridiculous.

Some suggestions, to get some constructiveness out of this post:

- Mediums shouldn't start showing up before I've been able to unlock the materials to deal with them.

- Upgrade avalanche so they can kill a medium in at MOST 4 hits.

- Re-Arm before Re-Fuel. It's a war after all.

- When a UFO wave shows up, spread it across multiple bases. If 2 of these squadrons had shown up at my other base, it would have been much better.

- Decrease fuel burn when chasing aircraft in the geoscape. Afterburners should use it quickly, but I can barely fly to the edge of my radar detection range without running out of fuel.

- Fix the bug where "Aircraft is running out of fuel, do you want to return home? Yes. Boom, aircraft dies anyway"

- Reduce the number of UFOs in early game and on easier difficulties.

- Cannons should have a LOT more ammo. If I can sit on the tail of a big, heavy craft, and they have no "ass lasers", I should be able to do damage to it.

Edited December 20, 2013 by kraex

[StellarRat]

Yes, but you don't have to "deal" with every wave right now. Once you get Alenuim explosives things will change for the better and you'll start improving your situation. I'd just do the best you can with each wave for now. If you shoot down half of them you should be OK. Once you have three bases with three or four jets in each one and Alenium warheads you'll be doing fine. The first two months are the hardest IMO. If you can hang on through those things will improve.

[kraex]

Yes, but you don't have to "deal" with every wave right now.

Then this is a serious pacing issue. For it to be this hard to keep up relations on normal difficulty, and you saying it gets easier later, that's a design problem. If I were playing on something difficult, ok. But ground combat is ridiculously easy, and air combat is disproportionately hard. That's the point of this entire thread. I have to spend far too many resources and thought on what should be a secondary part of the game.

[StellarRat]

Well, they are working on some changes to make ground combat harder. The air thing is probably going to stay about the same. They already reduced the air combat by a 1/3 in the last patch. It is an intentional design thing for the first couple months to be really hard. As the situation is grim when the Xenonaut organization is formed. You're supposed to lose relations for the first couple months then begin to gradually start winning them back. So the first couple months are the "darkness before the dawn."

[Dranak]

Where is your first base situated at? Waves happen every 3-5 days, so to make it into November with only having seen 3 waves is pretty impressive. UFOs (are at least supposed to) each randomly select a region to spawn in, so in theory there should be a somewhat equal distribution (which gets messed up in practice because Egypt/Middle East let you cover so many regions with one base). The fact that base was new isn't really a factor, the same number of ships would spawn there even if you didn't have a base. The fact you do means you can at least blunt the effect of that alien wave.

Currently the game is pretty much "balanced" around rushing each tier of explosives. It's incredibly punishing for new players that don't know that, or manage to get RNG screwed into not unlocking it. That tech is unlocked by recovering the power source from a Scout (seems to only be attainable from lightly damaged ones). Here's how massively having them would have changed that wave for you.

Foxtrots fly naked against the escorted Corvette (UFOs on base building/terror/base attack missions seem to always have escorts, so they're higher priority). They can fly in, nuke the Corvette and disengage relatively safely from the Fighters (haven't lost one yet doing this in this build). Corvette is down, and the escorts will disappear from the Geoscape.

One Condor takes out the Light Scout.

All craft refuel/rearm.

Foxes take out the other Corvette, Condors try to catch the Scout. If they fail, you may still be able to relauch a 3rd sortie with the Foxtrots. A single Foxtrot with Alenium Torpedoes kills a Scout.

I do agree that the game hinges far more on your ability to manage the air combat than ground combat now (especially economically), probably to too far of a degree.

[kraex]

Where is your first base situated at?

[snip]

gets messed up in practice because Egypt/Middle East let you cover so many regions with one base

The base is in the middle east with double or triple radar. So it's possible they were intended to be spread and I just detected them all.

[Dranak]

The base is in the middle east with double or triple radar. So it's possible they were intended to be spread and I just detected them all.

They do seem to be frequently detected in clusters, but I can't tell if that's just RNG or not as I've never really watched closely and now that I have global coverage they seem semi-randomly spread. It's still impressively bad RNG to only see three sets of spawns from there, especially with Scouts able to spawn after Sep 17.

[mrsisk]

I don't know if this has any pertinence on this thread, but this video really hepled me with the AC part of this game:

I had no idea before this how much control you have over your interceptors. All I was doing was using the Afterburner, Roll and Disengage buttons. But knowing that you can use the throttle to control your turn rate, that you can tell your ships to roll right or left using in the Q and E keys (instead of hoping that the Roll button takes your in ship the correct direction and not fly directly into a high threat area), and mostly that you can select an interceptor and then left click where you want it to fly (thus making the bait and flank maneuver possible)...all that turns a usually underdeveloped part of this kind of game into a real tactical element that I'm finding as fun or more fun than ground combat.

The OG's AC element was really barebones and pretty dumb. Even the new reimagining of the OG has a crappy and way-to-minimalized AC element. Xenonauts blows them away with this interface making user skill a more important part of AC without trying to turn the game into a flight sim or something else it was never intended to be. I think it finally makes AC the third leg upon which the game stands, rather than being a cheap mini-game. I mean, you have to shoot down UFOs to keep regional good will and provide your soldiers with XP, and your technicians with materials to build better stuff.

I just took down a Corvette and two escort fighters with 2 Condors (one with just sidewinders) and a Foxtrot. One of the Condors took 45% damage, but that was my mistake...rolled the wrong direction a few seconds too soon.

This is challenging in the way ground combat isn't at the moment. I quite like it so far.

Edited December 23, 2013 by mrsisk

[kraex]

Yeah, I've seen that, and other, videos as well. I'm not talking at all about the "difficulty" in the actual air combat screen. I'm talking about the need for so many interceptors, and the emphasis of gameplay on air dominance. I like that there's some actual gameplay in air combat. What I don't like is how big a part of the game interception plays. It's almost as if the developers thought to themselves, well, we made this cool thing, now let's make it a bigger part of gameplay. It doesn't need to be.

This is challenging in the way ground combat isn't at the moment. I quite like it so far.

I find the premise of your statement to be a problem. This isn't an "air combat" game if it really is supposed to be any kind of spiritual successor to X-com. So if the add-on air combat is more challenging (and by inference more fun) than ground combat, that's a problem. Also, you'll quickly find that it's not so challenging. The first time you learn you can speed up, slow down, and manually pilot it's a big deal. But you'll soon find that either have the weapons to down the aliens or you don't.

[StellarRat]

I find the premise of your statement to be a problem. This isn't an "air combat" game if it really is supposed to be any kind of spiritual successor to X-com. So if the add-on air combat is more challenging (and by inference more fun) than ground combat, that's a problem.

There is an autoresolve for AC, but I think right now you can do better with manual control. That is supposed to be fixed by GH soon though. I would say "spiritual successor" is the proper term. That means "in the spirit of" not "just like". They've also added a bigger tech tree, more weapons, more tactical options, a more complex tactical model, a more complex funding model, a different timeline, etc...

[Dranak]

If the autoresolve is ever better than or equal to manual control, then there's no reason to ever actually play the air combat. If it's inferior (and it is generally) then using it is always the wrong choice (aside from situations where you're guaranteed victory), or exploiting things like autoresolve not caring about fuel.

[ElMyamo]

Personally I love the air combat, it feels really good in terms of balance, handling and gameplay in general.

What I read out of the statement in question

This is challenging in the way ground combat isn't at the moment. I quite like it so far.

is that ground combat is not challenging enough at the moment, a statement I completely and utterly agree with.

Yes, air superiority is a big part of the game, it's a discussion well worth having whether or not the game focuses too much on it. But that discussion not withstanding, the aircombat is really well done.

Personally I think if the kinks that currently bug the groundcombat (passive aliens, stupid AI and so on) are worked out and the groundcombat becomes more and more challenging it will work itself out, I think we may notice the heavy focus on the aircombat because groundcombat is too easy as it is right now.

[mrsisk]

...if the add-on air combat is more challenging (and by inference more fun) than ground combat, that's a problem.

There are already several threads about improving ground combat. I actually don't dislike it right now, but agree that it needs to be more challenging. And since I'm probably spending 90% of my game time doing ground combat, I don't think that part of the game is under represented. Aerial combat, too, even though it's more challenging and possibly more fun for me at the moment than it's ever been, is still a very small part of the game when you look at the actual amount of time I spend in that mode.

Honestly, to me, and meaning no disrespect, it sounds like your current playthrough is just hampered by you not having progressed along the tech trees advantageously enough. You're in a tight spot. You probably can get through it if you persist, knowing now that you need to get better weapons for your aircraft. But even if you can't recover this play through, I'm not sure your current experience is indicative of a broken game mechanic. Part of it may just be learning curve, as Xenonauts was never meant to be a direct one-to-one with the OG. There were development decisions made early on that clearly broke with the X-COM mold: no making stuff to sell at a profit, no micromanging mundane starter equipment, no human use of psionics, etc. In some respects, having played the orginal may be a bit of a drag on our learning curves as we may be expecting the game to act one way, when it acts another. I know early on I had a few moments where I just had to let go my expectations from playing the OG and just deal with Xenonauts for what it is.

And after all...hey, it's still beta.

[StellarRat]

...I know early on I had a few moments where I just had to let go my expectations from playing the OG and just deal with Xenonauts for what it is...

"The OG will be with you, always."

[kraex]

Honestly, to me, and meaning no disrespect, it sounds like your current playthrough is just hampered by you not having progressed along the tech trees advantageously enough. You're in a tight spot. You probably can get through it if you persist, knowing now that you need to get better weapons for your aircraft. But even if you can't recover this play through, I'm not sure your current experience is indicative of a broken game mechanic

There is an autoresolve for AC, but I think right now you can do better with manual control. That is supposed to be fixed by GH soon though. I would say "spiritual successor" is the proper term.

Again, I realize that the "difficulty" of my current playthrough (which is one of 4 btw, just the only one working after the stable patches broke all the others) is related to this. Difficulty of air combat isn't really my point. Having to commit so many resources to managing interception is. And while you may be spending 90% of your time doing ground combat, it's now well documented that you're doing that by choice. That not only is airstrike for all but 3-4 missions possible, it's probably favorable unless you're saving/reloading.

Autoresolve isn't particularly relevant to the discussion.

[StellarRat]

Again, I realize that the "difficulty" of my current playthrough (which is one of 4 btw, just the only one working after the stable patches broke all the others) is related to this. Difficulty of air combat isn't really my point. Having to commit so many resources to managing interception is. And while you may be spending 90% of your time doing ground combat, it's now well documented that you're doing that by choice. That not only is airstrike for all but 3-4 missions possible, it's probably favorable unless you're saving/reloading.

Autoresolve isn't particularly relevant to the discussion.

If you're talking about in game financial resources I seem to remember that aircraft were very expensive in the OG and they could be completely destroyed unlike here where we get them back eventually. But, in the OG you had to run a very large number of ground missions to win. Here you have run quite a few, but your funding is more dependent on interceptions. I guess I really don't see a big problem with that. You can't even maintain air superiority without UFO tech and materials recovered in ground combat.

[Dranak]

If you're talking about in game financial resources I seem to remember that aircraft were very expensive in the OG and they could be completely destroyed unlike here where we get them back eventually. But, in the OG you had to run a very large number of ground missions to win. Here you have run quite a few, but your funding is more dependent on interceptions. I guess I really don't see a big problem with that. You can't even maintain air superiority without UFO tech and materials recovered in ground combat.

Aircraft were trivially inexpensive in the scape of the OG. An Avenger costs around 3.5 million including the values of all alien parts, which sounds like a lot until we take a look at this and get reminded that a single mid-game UFO can be worth well more than that. Earlier game craft are far less expensive, not to mention there are no monthly expenses with OG advanced craft. Yes, you can lose them but it is far more difficult to get a plane shot down than in Xeno (partly due to poor balance).

Both games are possible to win with doing very little ground combat. I intend to beat the game doing on assault per each type of UFO just for tech purposes, but could probably be successful doing half as many. The OG has already been beaten by people running just two missions.

I just checked my mid-Feb save where I've ran a total of 5 ground missions so far. My monthly funding is at $3.4M, of which I'm spending $2.2M on air combat (radar/hangar/aircraft). My salary costs are less than 600k, and my total ground combat purchases/construction is less than 800k for the entire game so far compared to about 2M in aircraft alone.

Edited December 24, 2013 by Dranak

[StellarRat]

Aircraft were trivially inexpensive in the scape of the OG. An Avenger costs around 3.5 million including the values of all alien parts, which sounds like a lot until we take a look at this and get reminded that a single mid-game UFO can be worth well more than that. Earlier game craft are far less expensive, not to mention there are no monthly expenses with OG advanced craft. Yes, you can lose them but it is far more difficult to get a plane shot down than in Xeno (partly due to poor balance).

Both games are possible to win with doing very little ground combat. I intend to beat the game doing on assault per each type of UFO just for tech purposes, but could probably be successful doing half as many. The OG has already been beaten by people running just two missions.

I just checked my mid-Feb save where I've ran a total of 5 ground missions so far. My monthly funding is at $3.4M, of which I'm spending $2.2M on air combat (radar/hangar/aircraft). My salary costs are less than 600k, and my total ground combat purchases/construction is less than 800k for the entire game so far compared to about 2M in aircraft alone.

I was only thinking of the cost, but I don't remember how much you pulled in in OG. Wasn't a fighter like 600K?